The NHL won’t let me love hockey anymore

Once upon a long time ago, I loved skating and hockey.

I took my first tentative stride on a frozen pond at age six or seven and, scant seconds later, I went splat! and suffered my first bloodied, swollen lip. It was the size of a Michelin tire.

I quickly became a serial stumbler on skates. Compared to me, Bambi was Sonja Henie.

It was as if my mission in life was to serve as a crash-test dummy and confirm the unforgiving firmness of ice.

My wobbly ways led to elbows and knees bruised like rotting bananas, and I soon concluded that falling with such regularity was something I didn’t enjoy. I wanted no part of it. Piano lessons seemed the better bet. They were, after all, conducted in the warmth and coziness of our living room, and not once had my upper lip hit the keyboard and bloated up like my Uncle Jim’s tummy after an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Alas, some wise acre thought it would be a swell idea to sign me up to play hockey. That’s right, it wasn’t enough that I fell on my own; now the other kids would be allowed to knock me down. Deliberately. Without retribution.

Except I was such a dreadful skater that they stuck me in goal, only to discover that I couldn’t stop a puck either, so I spent the rest of my first hockey winter watching from a board-side snow bank.

My second year of Little NHL was no less a disaster. I was recognized league wide as the worst player, and scored my only goal of the season in the final game. It took no amount of skill, other than standing on my wonky ankles at the lip of the crease and shoveling the puck two feet into an empty net.

I harbored zero fondness for hockey. It was a curse.

Then an odd thing occurred in my third winter of hockey. As if by magic, my legs and feet worked in concert. I could skate. Fast. I went from one goal to 50-plus and became the Little NHL scoring champion. Our league all-star team won the Pee Wee title against neighboring communities.

Best of all, many of the kids who once teased and taunted me for being so small, frail and, to use their term, a sissy now wanted to buddy-up.

I loved hockey.

Hockey became my joy, the rink my safe place. My escape from demons. I would go to the outdoor freeze after dinner each night to skate and play shinny in the worst weather, and all concerns vanished. Nothing mattered, not the inevitable scolding I’d receive for my so-so report card, not the back of my dad’s hand, not being grounded for an imagined violation, not gender confusion. It was just skating and hockey and a fantasy-like state of existence for a few hours.

It stayed that way throughout my youth, then fate took a very favorable turn and I was hired to write sports for a newspaper, fresh out of high school.

It was a dream job that I lived for 30 years. I covered everything from Pee Wee to the National Hockey League for five different dailies, and sat on press row in story-studded citadels like Madison Square Garden, the Montreal Forum and Maple Leaf Gardens. I enjoyed natters with giants of the game—Wayne Gretzky, Gordie Howe, Vladislav Tretiak—and walked among the fabulous—Jean Beliveau—and the felonious—Humpty Harold Ballard and Alan Eagleson.

I was there when Gretzky made his professional debut in Indianapolis, I was there when the Winnipeg Jets won the final Avco World Trophy, and I was there when the Edmonton Oilers took ownership of the Stanley Cup for the first time.

I loved hockey. Then.

Now?

Gary Bettman won’t allow me to love hockey anymore.

The NHL commissioner, you see, continues to trumpet the “Hockey Is For Everyone” mantra, but we know his pants are on fire. It’s his “Don’t Say Gay” league’s Trademark Big Lie, which some of us have been emphasizing since 2018, and many among the rabble and media are just now wising up to that reality.

They started to clue in when Bettman and team bankrolls put the kibosh on players wearing specialty theme jerseys in support of various causes/groups in pregame warmup, a directive that even the most naive should have seen as an anti-gay attack. If doubt remained, the NHL’s Rainbow Resistance Movement arrived at its predictable end-game this week with an idiotic ban on Pride tape.

That is, NHL players no longer will be permitted to wrap their hockey sticks with Pride rainbow tape anywhere on earth, except perhaps in a game of road hockey with the neighborhood kids. But, even at that, they’ll likely have to do it under the cloak of darkness, for fear mysterious men in black might approach and confiscate their sticks and sponge puck.

And that’s the tipping point for me, because it’s just stupid.

Bettman/owners have totally caved to seven Bible-thumpers and/or Putin Puppets who refused to wear Pride colors last season.

Look, I spent enough time in men’s hockey to know toxins have always existed—misogyny, racism, bigotry, homophobia, transphobia, bullying—and they seem more prevalent today, undoubtedly due to the shifting of people’s sensibilities. (Ask the disgraced Mike Babcock or Kevin Constantine about that.) But you can’t light a room by placing a basket over the candle, and you don’t eradicate homophobia by being homophobic.

So this is truly a sad moment in time. The NHL, so full of toxins, has become the toxin.

I’d remind Bettman that his NHL and the NHL Players Association issued a Declaration of Principles in September 2017, the last of which read: “We believe all hockey programs should provide a safe, positive and inclusive environment for players and families regardless of race, color, religion, national origin, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, and socio-economic status. Simply put, hockey is for everyone.”

I sorry, boys, but I don’t want to hear about hockey being ‘for everyone’ when the NHL remains the least diverse of all major men’s sports leagues in North America, and it refuses to permit its on-ice employees to support a marginalized group for 15 minutes once a year.

There’s nothing to love in that.

Will the last female transgender athlete to leave the arena please turn out the lights?

Once upon a lifetime, I played chess.

I wasn’t very good at it, not like those clever kids who can play, and win, multiple games simultaneously, but I once managed to register a stalemate vs. the most basic of chess computers (at the third-lowest level) in the 1970s, when I was no longer a kid.

That modest achievement failed to arrest the attention of world champion Bobby Fischer, and I took his indifference as a clear signal that I best not give up my day job, which was mostly a night job writing and editing sports copy at the Winnipeg Tribune. The pawns, the knights and the rooks would have to get along without me, and I without them.

Until this past week, I hadn’t devoted much ponder to chess since then, the exception being in the 1990s when Garry Kasparov went mano-a-machine vs. Deep Blue, an IBM computer.

Kasparov, at that time world No. 1, whupped Deep Blue in their initial six-game test (4-2), but the computer exacted revenge in the rematch (3½-2½ ). Their two exchanges generated headlines globally, even in the sports sections of some newspapers, and the brainiacs of board games had their 15 minutes of fame.

Fast forward to another century, which is to say the here and now.

Chess is once again generating headlines because the International Chess Federation (FIDE) has ruled that transgender females have “no right” to join in the checkmate fun. At least not in FIDE-sanctioned women’s competition. They can play vs. the dudes (or a computer, one supposes) but the damsels are off limits.

“In the event that the gender was changed from a male to a female the player has no right to participate in official FIDE events for women until further FIDE’s decision is made. Such decision should be based on further analysis and shall be taken by the FIDE Council at the earliest possible time, but not longer than within 2 (two) years period,” is how FIDE worded it in the updated handbook.

The Lords of Checkmate provide no explanation for their puzzling posture, leaving us to conclude that they believe biological women are too daft to match strategy with their transgender foes or men. Can you say misogyny and transphobia, kids?

But wait. FIDE vows to gather deep “research evidence” on the matter, like mulling the benefits of a Sicilian or Scandinavian Defence, but in reality they’ll give it no more thought than the breakfast menu at McDonald’s.

After all, what’s to learn? They’ve already joined the nasty and relentless anti-transgender lobby and pushed it into a new lane, from the physical to the cerebral. Instead of yelping that transgender females are bigger, faster and stronger, FIDE is now inferring that cis women are lacking a full load of hay in the loft.

How FIDE plans to prove that a great gap in grey matter exists is a mystery, but I’m guessing they’ll cobble together a group of people with egg-shaped heads and their findings will be as hair-brained as the chess ban. Little wonder US Chess along with federations in England, Germany, France and Finland have given thumbs down to the FIDE policy and will continue to welcome transgender players.

“While we do take FIDE policies into consideration, we independently establish our own policies and procedures,” US Chess Senior Director of Stategic Communication Daniel Lucas told The Messenger.

Here’s the reality of the situation:

The Lords of Checkmate want transgender females included in their game like Donald Trump wants another sheriff with a subpoena knocking on his door.

FIDE doesn’t actually believe transgender females have more smarts than cis women. That’s pure rubbish and insulting in the extreme. And they know it. But they, like so many sports groups ahead of them in the monkey see-monkey do, anti-trans queue, want trans chess players to know their proper place, just as the lords of rowing and rugby and swimming and cycling and World Athletics, etc. have already done. And like more than 20 U.S. states that have enacted laws to have them exiled.

In the anti-trans lobbyist’s perfect world, the Gender Police would gather all the female transgender athletes and ship them off to a remote locale, the way the British did with their dispensable nogoodniks in the 1700s/1800s. Or perhaps they’d rather create transgender colonies, where the sports lepers can run and jump and move their knights and rooks in anonymity.

Ridiculous? Of course. But no more illogical than the notion biological females were given partial portions when brains were passed out.

I now wonder what sports governing body will next join the anti-trans lobby, because there are people in positions of power and influence (politicians, media) who won’t be satisfied until the transgender female athlete in women’s competition is extinct.

Perhaps it will be the World Pool-Billiard Association. After all, there are striking similarities between chess and, say, 8-ball. Neither is physically demanding, since it takes only marginally more strength to push those 15 little balls around a patch of green cloth than it does to slide a Bishop diagonally across a chess board to capture the Queen. And a cue weighs what, 17-21 ounces? Why, that’s barely bigger than the swizzle stick in a FIDE board member’s cocktail glass.

But here’s where the transgender female pool sharks might find themselves at risk: 8-ball is very much a matter of mind. There’s decision-making. Tactics. Creativity. Problem-solving. Ruthless attitude. You know, the same as chess.

The Lords of 8-Ball might see that as a recipe for banishment.

Go ahead and say it won’t happen—that it will never happen—but who would have thought that FIDE, with its immense, superior man brains (61 of 72 officials’ positions are occupied by dudes), would be so dense as to be duped into doing the anti-trans lobby’s dirty work.

Talk about pawns.

A red card to BBC reporter for trying to out Moroccan futbol players

Coming out is difficult.

You fret, wondering how many of your family and friends will disengage, and who among the rabble will whisper behind your back or, worse, climb atop a roof to shout out the news that you’re part of the LGBT(etc.) community, making you a target of every hate monger with a creepy and unnatural interest in your dating inclination.

You wonder how many among those hate mongers might lean toward violence.

You also give ponder to issues of employment, housing, medical care, schooling and your next trip to the bakery, hoping the cashier won’t look at you as if you grew a second head overnight or deny you service.

It’s a heavy load, and the weight of worry (some would accurately describe it as fear) seems to be particularly problematic for gay men, most notably professional athletes, and transgender individuals looking for the proper public pot to pee in, the women’s or the men’s.

I have described the coming-out process thus:

“Discovering yourself is the interesting part, accepting yourself is the hard part, revealing yourself is the frightening part that goes bump in the night.”

Fortunately, in our portion of the globe we are spared one scary bit: Prison.

Not so lucky are Moroccans, which is why an aborted natter between a BBC news snoop and national soccer side captain Ghizlane Chebbak at the FIFA Women’s World Cup was excessively dim-witted and exceedingly problematic. If you missed it, this was the exchange:

BBC: “In Morocco, it’s illegal to have a gay relationship. Do you have any gay players in your squad, and what is life like for them in Morocco?”

Moderator: “Sorry, this is a very political question. So we’ll just stick to questions relating to football.”

BBC: “It’s about people. It’s got nothing to do with politics. Please let her answer the question.”

End of discussion.

So give that man a red card!

Actually, make it two red cards, one for remarkable nitwit-ism and the other for being—to use tennis legend Martina Navratilova’s word—a “wanker.”

You can go to prison for being gay in Morocco, one of 68 countries on our big, blue orb in which homosexuality is a felony. It’s outlined in Penal Code 1962, Article 489 Unnatural Acts: “Any person who commits lewd or unnatural acts with an individual of the same sex shall be punished with a term of imprisonment of between six months and three years and a fine of 120 to 1,000 dirhams, unless the facts of the case constitute aggravating circumstances.”

Armed with this knowledge, the BBC dude still expected Chebbak to out her LGBT(etc.) teammates, if not herself, whereupon they would be at risk of time behind bars. Perhaps he believes “Go to jail, go directly to jail, do not pass Go” would make for a boffo marketing campaign.

Good grief.

Maybe he’ll next grill the Nigerian captain, demanding a roll call of lesbians among that country’s 23 World Cuppers, even though outing them could lead to death by stoning.

Anything for a story, right?

Except that isn’t the story you chase, and not simply because it could lead to dire consequences. It isn’t the province of a news snoop to out anyone, let alone the principals on a global sporting stage.

Coming out is a difficult, delicate decision, and you don’t want some nameless goomer with a pen and notepad doing it for you, not unless it’s at your beckoning. It needs to be your call, on your timetable, just as it is for all in the LGBT(etc.) collective. Anything else is irresponsible journalism.

Fans, of course, can speculate, and they do. For example, one New York Post reader suggested that the players in Australia and New Zealand are “mostly a pack of lesbians,” as if that’s a bad thing. What, gay women shouldn’t be allowed to join a kick-about? Is the roller derby rink a more suitable environment? How about the UFC octagon?

The ill-informed musings of the rabble notwithstanding, we know there are 95 out LGBT(etc.) players on the pitch down Under (12.9 per cent of the 32 nation rosters), because they outed themselves on various platforms. And they’re at risk, even in North America.

For the first time ever, the Human Rights Campaign has declared “a state of emergency for LGBTQ+ people in the United States.” It cites the alarming number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills being passed in state legislative houses (more than 500 introduced in 41 states this year) and says “our community is in danger.”

Three members of the American side Down Under are out LGBT(etc.). There might be others still in the closet. If so, I’m sure the BBC will be first to ferret them out. Sigh.

Let’s talk about the Mars and Venus dynamic of elite futbol and team sports…Rapinoe’s last stand…hockey power rankings in July…a criminal, a cheat and a hypcocrite…and long live Tony Bennett…

The FIFA women’s World Cup down there in Australia and New Zealand is not merely an example of fabulous sporting theatre, it’s also a stark reminder of the contrasting cultures in elite-level football.

For one thing, the women play a much more honest brand of futbol than the men. That is to say, they spend more time frolicking on their feet rather than on their backsides, gyrating as if they’re giving birth to 10 pounds of barbed wire.

Oh, sure, flopping is part of female footy, too, but when we see a player supine on the pitch there’s a high likelihood that she’s actually wounded, not Meryl Streeping in the hope of hoodwinking a referee into a red card or maybe even an Oscar nomination. (See 2011 Wake Forest study re female and male soccer players diving.)

But fake-injury time isn’t the main point of separation between the women’s and men’s games. Sexuality is.

According to the folks who track such things at the website Outsports, 94 of the 736 players (12.7 per cent) getting their kicks Down Under are LGBT(etc.), and that’s likely a low number because the tally doesn’t include those in the closet. Twenty-two of the 32 sides feature at least one out player, with the co-hosting Matildas leading the way at 10 and Ireland and Brazil right behind at nine apiece.

Our Canadian side includes out players Kadeisha Buchanan, Quinn and Kailen Sheridan, plus Bev Priestman, one of two gay coaches.

Now consider the men’s World Cup.

Number of out gay men at Qatar in 2022: Nil. Number of out gay men at any of the 22 World Cup tournaments: Nil.

I suppose we could say this is all much ado about nil, because a player’s sexual orientation isn’t noted on a game sheet and no one wins the Golden Boot based on clicks on a dating app. Except that misses the point, which speaks to where we are in team sports 23-plus years into the 21st century.

It’s no secret that female athletes are comfortable in their own skin. The WNBA is the clubhouse leader on the inclusion file, with estimates of gay players ranging from 20 to 50 per cent. Connecticut Sun stars Alyssa Thomas and DeWanna Bonner announced their engagement on Friday. Meantime, soccer and hockey aren’t lagging far behind. Canada’s gold-medal winning shinny side at the 2022 Olympics, for example, included nine lesbians—Brianne Jenner, Erin Ambrose, Emily Clark, Melodie Daoust, Jill Saulnier, Jamie Lee Rattray, Micah Zandee-Hart, and two who became engaged in May, Laura Stacey and captain Marie-Philip Poulin. Meantime, the Yankee Doodle Damsels who won the 2019 Women’s World Cup in France featured half a dozen out gays—Tierna Davidson, Adrianna Franch, Ashlyn Harris, Ali Krieger, Kelley O’Hara and captain Megan Rapinoe, who’s engaged to WNBA legend Sue Bird.

“Go gays. You can’t win a championship without gays on your team. It’s never been done before, ever,” is how American captain Rapinoe put it during her fabulous French journey to a fourth WC title.

It’s to the point whereby a gay female athlete need not out herself. It’s dog-bites-man stuff. Nothing to see. Let’s move on.

The men, on the other hand…well, homosexuality remains a major bugaboo. You know, that scary thing that goes bump in the night.

Carl Nassib

Gay men continue to make their mark in most segments of society, but not major team sports. Go ahead and scan the landscape. The out gay man in the NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB and MLS is as scarce as belly laughs in a graveyard. Carl Nassib is a football player without a team, and Luke Prokop is a Nashville Predators prospect who might one day defy the longest of odds and actually become the first openly gay player—ever!—to wear an NHL jersey. That’s it. Two gay guys, one who’s been to the show and the other a wide-eyed wannabe.

So why the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus dynamic in elite team sports?

Well, people with egg-shaped heads have spent considerable time studying that very issue, and there doesn’t appear to be a one-size-fits-all conclusion.

One theory holds that young straight men remain tethered to the antiquated notion that gay equals lesser-than, and that the mere existence of a gay guy on the roster would up-end the apple cart (Tony Dungy called it a “distraction”), thus making on-field success an extremely remote, also illogical, likelihood.

Robbie Rogers

But would Argentina have been less likely to win the 2022 men’s World Cup had there been an openly out gay sharing the pitch and changing room with Lionel Messi and the straight guys? We can only speculate, but we do know that the LA Galaxy became lords of Major League Soccer with Robbie Rogers on the pitch and in the changing room in 2014. So what’s to fear?

The abundance of successful LGBT(etc.) players on the distaff side of the playground is the strongest indicator that a mix of gays and straights is doable. They work in concert and lift championship trophies together, not to mention pad their bank accounts with playoff coin.

Yet, despite overwhelming evidence, that remains a foreign concept among the men, even as studies tell us a majority of gays who come out experience a favorable reception from teammates. So why is it that gay male athletes are still considered poisonous fruit best kept out of sight? If they truly believed it was safe to come out, wouldn’t we be seeing them?

Perhaps it really is as simple as the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus thing.

Whatever the case, I don’t expect to see a men’s World Cup featuring 94 out LGBT(etc.) players in my lifetime, but it would be nice if the guys would learn the lessons of Venus and, even better, live in the same century.

If Canada doesn’t win Down Under, my World Cup rooting interests shift to these countries, in this order:
Ireland…What can I say? I’m Irish.
Sweden…Never met a Swede I didn’t like.
England…It’s a Commonwealth thing.
Brazil…Big fan of Marta.
Australia…Matildas have the most gay players.

Attendance for the first three days of the women’s World Cup of soccer:
42,137 Eden Park, Auckland (record for New Zealand futbol).
75,784 Stadium Australia, Sydney (record for Aussie female futbol).
21,410 Melbourne Rectangular Stadium.
13,711 Dunedin Stadium, NZ.
22,966 Wellington Regional Stadium, NZ.
41,107 Eden Park.
16,111 Waikato Stadium, Hamilton, NZ.
44,369 Brisbane Stadium, AU.
16,989 Perth Rectangular Stadium.
18,317 Wellington Regional Stadium.
But, hey, they say nobody wants to watch women’s sports (whoever “they” are).

America’s talk-a-lot forward, the blue-haired Megan Rapinoe, plans to hang up her futbol boots and live happily ever after with the lady in her life, Sue Bird, after the World Cup and National Women’s Soccer League season. Does that mean she’ll finally shut the hell up?

Actually, I’ve usually found myself nodding in agreement with much of Rapinoe’s blah, blah, blah over the years, so I’d rather she doesn’t take a vow of silence once the cheering has stopped.

Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle

Here’s Damien Cox of the Toronto Star on our soccer side reaching the top step of the medal podium at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo: “It was the first time a Canadian women’s team had won gold at the Summer Games in any sport.” D’oh! Our female rowers (eights) struck gold seven days before our female footballers, and it wasn’t a “first.” Here’s a list of earlier gold medal-winning outfits:

2020: Susanne Grainger, Lisa Roman, Chrstine Roper, Sydney Payne, Madison Mailey, Kasia Gruchalla-Wesierski, Avalon Wasteneys, Andrea Proskie and Kristen Kit (cox) – rowing, women’s eight.
1996:  Marnie McBean and Kathleen Heddle – rowing, women’s double sculls.
1992: Kathleen Heddle and Marnie McBean – rowing, women’s pairs.
Kay Worthington, Kirsten Barnes, Jessica Monroe and Brenda Taylor – rowing, women’s coxless fours.
Marnie McBean, Kathleen Heddle, Kirsten Barnes, Brenda Taylor, Jessica Montroe, Kay Worthington, Megan Delehanty, Shannon Crawford and Lesley Thompson – rowing, women’s eights with coxswain.
1988: Carolyn Waldo and Michelle Cameron – synchronized swimming, women’s duet.
1928: Ethel Smith, Bobbie Rosenfeld, Myrtle Cook, Jane Bell – athletics, women’s 4×100 metre relay.

I’m not sure what part of “team” Cox fails to understand, but apparently he would have us believe that two-to-eight women pulling oars in unison doesn’t qualify as a “team.” Ditto two women sync swimming or four women foot racing. It boggles the mind.

On the subject of teams, Ryan Dixon of Sportsnet has delivered a Dog Days of Summer power rankings list for National Hockey League outfits, and he rates the Winnipeg Jets No. 24. “It’s almost easy to forget Winnipeg made the post-season this past year because it struggled for so long down the stretch and got bounced in five games by Vegas,” he writes. “Clearly it’s time to turn over a new leaf in Manitoba and while GM Kevin Cheveldayoff did well in the Dubois deal, it’s still seems like some tough days are ahead for this club.” The Jets won’t know tough until they no longer have Connor Hellebuyck in the blue paint to bail them out.

Interesting, also odd, that Dixon has the Toronto Maple Leafs listed at No. 4. I mean, don’t news snoops in the Republic of Tranna normally have the Leafs winning the Stanley Cup at this time of year?

Rory McIlroy says he’ll quit golf if LIV becomes the only tour available. Ya, and Joey Chestnut will stop pigging out on hot dogs if they aren’t Nathan’s.

Wasn’t it thoughtful of O.J. Simpson to take a break from his life’s mission of finding the real killers to explain what should be done with transgender athletes? I mean, what would the discussion be without input from a convicted felon whose rap sheet includes kidnapping, armed robbery and, oh ya, the murder of a woman? “It just isn’t fair,” is Simpson’s take on the transgender/female athlete issue. I’d say his concern for women is touching, if not admirable, except there’s that small matter of double homicide, one of the victims being his ex-wife, Nicole Brown. I fail to see what’s “fair” about murder, but perhaps the real killers can explain it to us once Simpson finds them on a golf course.

The Hypocrite and The Cheat

Let’s see, which notables have recently joined the “fairness” discussion as it relates to transgender females competing against biological females? Well, there’s Simpson, a convicted felon. There’s Lance Armstrong, a disgraced cyclist under a lifetime ban for being the biggest cheat in the history of pedal-pushing. And there’s Caitlyn Jenner, a transgender female full-score against the inclusion of transgender females in female sports, yet she competes in female golf tournaments. So we have a convict, a cheat and a hypocritical attention hog. It’s like getting Larry, Curly and Moe together for a panel chin-wag on quantum physics.

On the other side of that discussion is Charles Barkley, the NBA great who teed it up in a celebrity golf tournament at Lake Tahoe last week and popped into a pub to share some suds and thoughts with locals. If you’ve been following along, you’ll know that the anti-transgender mob has boycotted Bud Light because Anheuser-Busch used Dylan Mulvaney to pitch its product. Well, Sir Charles is having none of that. “If you’re gay, God bless you. If you’re trans, God bless you. And if you have a problem with them (f–k) you. If you are gay, lesbian, transgender, live your f—–g life,” Sir Charles told patrons. He also bought them pints. Bud Light, naturally.

And, finally, Tony Bennett is dead. Damn. I love the man’s voice, his singing style, the joy he expressed when the band began to play. It would be a total bummer if not for the fact his voice and music play on. Tony Bennett is dead, long live Tony Bennett.

50 years after Stonewall, lesbian athletes make strides while gay men remain stuck at ground zero

The past does not tell us where we have been, it tells us where we are.

So where are LGBT athletes today as Pride Month 2019 kicks off, half a century after the Stonewall Riots in Gotham’s Greenwich Village?

The answer, I suppose, depends on which scorecard you use.

Certainly there has been considerable advancement in the inclusion file, both on and off the playing fields of North America and, indeed, in global frolics like the Olympic Games.

Here are some of the notations you’ll find on that particular scorecard:

Billie Jean King and Ilana Kloss.

* Lesbian tennis legend Billie Jean King and longtime partner Ilana Kloss are part of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ ownership group.
* Out lesbian Laura Ricketts is co-owner of the Chicago Cubs.
* Golden State Warriors out gay president and chief operating officer Rick Welts was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame last year.
* Out lesbian Caroline Ouillette is assistant coach with Canada’s national women’s hockey team (she’s married to former Team U.S.A. captain Julie Chu and they have a daughter together).
* Out lesbians Jayna Hefford and Angela James have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
* 56 LGBT athletes competed in the 2016 Summer Olympics.
* 15 LGBT athletes competed in the 2018 Winter Olympics.
* 16 out lesbians were on rosters at the 2015 women’s World Cup of soccer.

Abby Wambach

* The leading goal-scorer in the history of women’s international soccer, Abby Wambach, is an out lesbian.
* 7 players in the 2018 Women’s National Basketball Association all-star game were out lesbians.
* Both the Canadian Women’s Hockey League and National Women’s Hockey League have featured transgender players—Harrison Browne and Jessica Platt—and numerous out lesbians.
* U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe became the first out lesbian to be featured in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.
* Rapinoe and hoops star Sue Bird became the first LGBT couple to be featured in ESPN The Magazine body issue.

* Out lesbian Katie Sowers is an assistant coach with the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League.

That acceptance is terrific, for the LGBT collective and society as a whole.

Unfortunately, there’s a second scorecard:

* Number of out gay men in the National Hockey League:             0
* Number of out gay men in the National Football League:            0
* Number of out gay men in the National Basketball Association: 0
* Number of out gay men in Major League Baseball:                     0
* Number of out gay men in Major League Soccer:                        0

Cite another segment of society in which the bottom-line number in 2019 is the same as the bottom-line number in 1969. I can’t think of one.

Thus, the motion of life moves everything forward with the exception of the cultural phenomenon that is professional male team sports, an unbudging, frat-boy enterprise still stuck in the mud fifty years after all hell broke loose in and outside the Stonewall Inn in Manhattan.

Are there gay men among the approximately 4,300 players on current NFL, NHL, NBA, MLB and MLS rosters? Here’s an easier question: Does Donald Trump tell fibs?

Gay male athletes have always existed. It’s just that 99.999999 per cent of them remained hidden in a closet, earnestly avoiding the most taboo of talking points until the final whistle had sounded on careers spent in fear of being outed as lesser-thans.

Gillian Apps and Meghan Duggan.

Women and men with framed diplomas that indicate intellectual loft have given ponder to the curious case of the closeted male jock, and the eggheads advance numerous theories in an effort to explain the refusal to identify as gay. But, really, it isn’t a Cadbury chocolate bar mystery. It can be cataloged under the ‘fear’ file. It’s the fear of loss—loss of family/friends; loss of career; loss of income; loss of credibility; loss of status.

No male athlete wishes to be known by friend, foe or fan as a lesser-than. A Nancy boy, if you will. So he plays on, keeping his choice of romantic interests on the hush-hush.

Lesbian athletes, on the other hand, are far ahead on the social curve. They are less inclined to hide from themselves or anyone else. Elena Delle Donne and Sue Bird are not thought of as lesser-thans. Ditto Abby Wambach or Megan Rapinoe. Billie Jean King is greatly admired. The same could be said for Martina Navratilova until she recently went off on transgender athletes. Caroline Ouillette and Julie Chu proudly post pics of their daughter on Instagram. Former hockey stars Gillian Apps and Meghan Duggan do the same with their wedding photos.

When Canada’s gold medal-winning goaltender Charline Labonté came out in 2014, she provided insight to the culture of the national women’s hockey club.

“Just like everywhere else our team had gays and straights, just like we had brunettes and redheads,” she wrote in an article for the LGBT website Outsports. “Everyone on my team has known I’m gay since I can remember and I never felt degraded for it. On the contrary, my sport and my team are the two environments where I feel most comfortable. The subject of homosexuality was never taboo with us. We talk and laugh about it like everything else. I feel privileged to live and be myself in an environment like this because I know that just a few years ago this topic was never part of the conversations in the locker room.”

Lesbians in sports has become a meh issue, and it’s only when a zealot like tennis legend Margaret Court turns the air toxic with illogical, wingnut rantings about same-sex marriage destroying Easter and Christmas that people give it any consideration.

Will men ever catch up to the women? Certainly not in my lifetime.

It is a peculiar business, indeed, when the San Francisco 49ers will happily hire a lesbian to tutor pass-catchers, yet there are no gay men in the NFL to catch passes.

Shawn Barber can come out and be out on his own terms

Life is full of little surprises that sometimes feel like an ambush. Like when you realize you’re gay or transgender. What do you do now?

Coming out is seldom, if ever, easy.

It’s like there are two of you, one sitting on each shoulder, and both are engaged in push-me-pull-you mental gymnastics that can be crippling, if not paralyzing.

Shawn Barber

The positive of the two yous is determined to push you out of the closet, trying to sway you with comforting assurances that family, friends, co-workers, classmates and everyday acquaintances will welcome and embrace the gay you with inviting arms and adoring smiles.

“It’ll be safe,” she whispers. “You have nothing to worry about. You’ll be free and the world will finally see the true you. They’ll love you.”

Yet, just as you are about to step out, the other you pulls you back with words of caution, if not scare tactics: “Leave this closet,” she says, waving a red flag, “and you will be rejected, degraded, humiliated, bullied, sullied and maybe even beaten up. Is that what you really want your life to become?”

It is as I have written: Discovering yourself is the interesting part, accepting yourself is the hard part, revealing yourself is the frightening part that goes bump in the night.

It would be helpful, of course, were there a How-To Manual for Coming Out. We could simply turn to the appropriate chapter and, presto, we’re out and we’re proud gay, lesbian and transgender women, men and children. Life goes on tickety-boo. Except it isn’t quite as simple as picking up a copy of Popular Mechanics to learn how to change the oil on your SUV.

There is no right way to come out. There is no wrong way, either, although my personal experience taught me that the right and wrong of coming out is very much left to interpretation.

I advised those closest to me in a lengthy late-night email and, as I was to discover from a dear friend who has since basically disappeared from my life, it was callous, insensitive, hurtful and ill-timed. How dare I not advise her before all others, and how thoughtless of me to dump such naked honesty on her when she was dealing with her own level of personal strife.

“We had a special relationship,” she reminded me in an accusatory tone a number of years later, at our first get-together after the fact. “You should have told me first.”

“We have to do this in our own way and on our own timetable,” I tried to explain in an unflinching way that, I suppose, might have come across as clinical and unfeeling. “Each of us is different. We find our own way. We feel when the time is right, then we do it and expect the worst but hope for the best.”

Is there an element of selfishness in all that. By definition, absolutely. You are foremost and uppermost. Yet you also acknowledge that others might be wounded, which only adds more uncertainty to the original, push-me-pull-you pile of confusion.

It doesn’t end there, either.

Now that you’re out, are you supposed to behave and talk a certain way? That is, do you now immerse yourself into the gay collective and become a mouthpiece and advocate for the gay rights cause? Or do you simply go about the business of being you? Again, that’s an individual choice.

This past April, world champion and Olympic pole vaulter Shawn Barber came out in 54 words on his Facebook page. He was gay and he was proud. Nothing more to see here. Let’s move on.

“A person has the right to say as little or as much as they want about their orientation,” observed Jim Buzinski on the website Outsports.

Agreed.

But wait. Here we are three months later and the other main scribe at Outsports, Cyd Zeigler, has scolded Barber, who, at the recent Canadian track and field championships, told the Toronto Star that his being gay is “something that shouldn’t be a big deal.”

“Declaring to the world that you’re gay—even if it was in desperately early morning hours—then going into hiding is hardly the behavior of a champion,” Zeigler wrote in a gratuitous bullying, attack piece. “Barber, instead, has cringed. For whatever reason, he has decided that the whole ‘gay thing’ isn’t a necessary part of his identity as an athlete. So he’s pulled back. He’s stayed silent. No, even worse, he has belittled his own coming out.”

Zeigler has since softened his stance and rewritten the article, but his original remarks make it abundantly clear that Barber has let down the team, so to speak, and they serve as a classic example of not only a writer going well over the line of fairness in commentary but also of gays eating their own.

Coming out is hard enough and Shawn Barber is doing it his way, same as Zeigler did it his way and I did it my way. Expecting us to be anything more than who we are is not only unfair, it flies in the face of what gays desire more than anything from society—to be accepted unconditionally for who we are.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling mostly about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.

 

Ol’ Maggie Court’s crazy ramblings are a reminder that there’s still much work to be done for the LGBT collective

Margaret Court says tennis “is full of lesbians.” As if that’s a bad thing.

Moreover, ol’ Maggie informs us that there were a couple of devil lesbians on the professional tennis circuit back in her day and, get this, they would take young players to parties. Imagine that. Young women partying. With lesbians. The horrors.

Ol’ Maggie has been saying a whole lot of oddball things lately and, if we are to believe the preacher lady from the Land of Oz, civilization is caught in the grip of a global plot orchestrated by the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender collective. Those pesky gays are stealing the minds of our children, don’t you know?

“That’s what Hitler did, that’s what communism did—got the mind of children,” she advises us. “And it’s a whole plot in our nation and in the nations of the world to get the minds of the children.”

Hmmm. Kind of reminds me of what the Roman Catholic Church tried to do to me when I was a sprig.

The nuns, when not whacking us on the knuckles with a yardstick, would regale us with far-out tales of fantasy gardens, poisonous fruit, hell fires, voodoo antics like turning the rib of a man into a woman and, best of all, talking snakes in a magical tree. Their stories were better than anything we watched on The Wonderful World of Disney. But apparently Margaret Court believes all the Bible-based, brainwashing blarney that my receptive mind was force-fed, and it’s quite clear that the great Australian tennis champion is convinced that gay and (especially) transgender people are the spawn of Satan.

“That’s all the devil,” she says of transgender kids.

Ol’ Maggie Court

Poor, ol’ Maggie. There’s just no escaping conniving gay men and (especially) lesbians. We’re always shoving ourselves in her face, so to speak. Why, it’s gotten so bad that she can’t even travel hither and yon on Qantas anymore because the airline’s CEO, Alan Joyce, is a gay man who, not surprisingly, promotes same-sex marriage, which is, in the world according to Maggie, “alternative, unhealthy, unnatural.” The right to wed is “not theirs to take.”

“I believe marriage as a union between a man and a woman as stated in the Bible,” she harrumphs.

Well, it’s about your Bible, Maggie: One person’s truth is another’s fiction.

The prune-faced preacher lady has been battered fore and aft for her Bible-thumping bleatings, which included a disapproving and extremely tacky tsk-tsking of Aussie tennis pro Casey Dellacqua and her partner Amanda Judd following the birth of the lesbian couple’s second child, a joyous event that Court greeted with “sadness” because the newborn has two mamas and zero papas.

I’d rather not join the Maggie-bashing chorus, though, because I think she’s unwittingly done the gay community a small favor.

The hell, you say. How can that be so?

Well, to be clear, I find her drawing a parallel between the LGBT collective and a mass murderer, Adolph Hitler, repugnant. It is not only offensive in the extreme, it shows she clearly has lost both the plot and the argument. She appears to be totally off her nut. But…I also think ol’ Maggie has provided us with a reminder, albeit appalling—at the top of Pride Month, no less—that we still have work to do. The fight for acceptance and equality continues. It has not been won. We must keep society’s feet to the fire.

I suppose we really shouldn’t care what comes out of this nutter’s mouth, but Court is a legendary sportswoman. No one has matched her two dozen tennis Grand Slam singles titles. One of the playing venues at the Australian Open in Melbourne is named in her honor (for now). And she is a pastor (the argument could be made that she’s more of a cult leader given that she created her own church, the Victory Life Centre in Perth). Thus, her voice carries some degree of heft. If not, the pushback from gay, transgender and, indeed, straight people against her homo/transphobic tripe wouldn’t be so robust.

I’ll just say this about that: Freedom of speech is a beautiful thing, but so is the freedom to shut the hell up. Ol’ Maggie might want to give that a try.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m stepping out to party with some lesbian tennis players.

Patti Dawn Swansson has been scribbling about Winnipeg sports for 47 years, which means she’s old and probably should think about getting a life.